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Donald Trump held Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Joe Biden responsible for the Russia–Ukraine war in an interview — but made no reference to Vladimir Putin.
Two and a half years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Trump pinned the blame squarely on Zelensky and Biden for the conflict during an interview with podcaster Patrick Bet-David, which aired Thursday.
“I think Zelensky is one of the greatest salesmen I’ve ever seen,” Trump said, grumbling about how much aid the US has given Ukraine.
“And that doesn’t mean I don’t want to help them because I feel very badly for those people. But he should never have let that war start,” the former president added.
“That war’s a loser.”
“This should’ve been settled before it started. It would’ve been so easy. If we had a president with half a brain, it would’ve been easy to settle,” he added.
The Republican nominee then said that he “largely blames” Biden for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, claiming he “instigated that war.”
Trump has previously asserted that if he had still been in the White House, the war never would have started. “Putin never ever would have gone into Ukraine if I were president,” he said in February 2023, just ahead of the conflict’s one-year-anniversary.
Years earlier, in 2017 then-President Trump allegedly asked Putin what he thought about the US hypothetically providing weapons to Ukraine, according to a New York Times report this month. Putin reportedly replied that it would be “a mistake.”
Thursday’s podcast interview comes a month after Trump met with Zelensky at Trump Tower in New York City, where he declared that the pair had a “very good relationship.”
He then added: “And I also have a very good relationship, as you know, with President Putin.”
“And if we win, I think we’re going to get it resolved very quickly,” Trump continued.
The former president’s comments also come amid after new revelations surfaced about Trump and Putin’s relationship in Bob Woodward’s new book War.
Woodward reported that Trump secretly sent Covid-19 tests to the Russian leader during the height of the pandemic, when tests were hard to come by in the US and around the world.
Woodward’s book also claimed that Trump and Putin had spoken on the phone on numerous occasions — maybe “as many as seven” times — since Trump left office in 2021.
Read More: Trump blames Zelensky and Biden – but not Putin – for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
